The virus metaphor may be used in studies of management knowledge not only as a way of
describing diffusion processes but also as a way of thinking about viral elements of knowledge
production. In the present article, organizational viruses are viewed as ensembles of basic
distinctions that are constitutive of concrete bodies of knowledge and which form mutable engines
of organizational self-descriptions. Organizational viruses, we contend, are both characterized by
stability in terms of their basic productive configuration, while at the same time allowing for a high
degree of variation in terms of concrete management knowledge and practice. The article is
structured as follows. After the introduction, we first develop the notion of organizational virus as
into an analytical approach. Second, we discern in the work of Frederick Taylor on scientific
management and Max Weber on bureaucracy, two quite distinct viral configurations that we claim
have infected most modern management knowledge – both on a discursive level and on the level of
concrete organizational self-descriptions and practice. Third, we discuss our findings and raise the
question of how viruses ‘work’, how they interact, and why they become infectious.

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Although waste prevention is considered the best possible waste management option in
the European waste hierarchy model, it is unclear what constitutes waste prevention. To
address this lack of clarity, this text presents an analysis of four Swedish case studies of
waste prevention: a waste management company selling waste prevention services; the
possibility offered to Swedish households to opt out of receiving unaddressed
promotional material; a car-sharing program; and a re-use center. This analysis is
informed by an action-net perspective that focuses on the way organizing emerges from
connecting actions, often prior to networking between actors. In conclusion, we stress
that waste prevention rests on the invention of new modes and patterns of interactions
that both build and disrupt the existing institutional order and underscore the
importance of physical artifacts and dedicated infrastructures for waste prevention
initiatives.

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In the late 1990s, Google pioneered the idea of scraping and repurposing digital traces
as a new form of data with which to understand people’s preferences and behaviour.
This way of generating empirical sensitivity towards the world can be termed digital
methods and the last five years have seen such methods gain influence beyond the field
of Internet search. Organizations of different kinds are increasingly mentioning the
need to harness the intelligence of ‘big’ digital datasets, and the social sciences have
similarly been marked by suggestions to move away from established methods such as
surveys and focus groups, and learn from the way Google and other companies have
succeeded in turning big datasets into knowledge of social dynamics. By enabling new
combinations of data and software and by providing new ways of searching,
aggregating, and cross-referencing empirical datasets, it seems probable that the spread
of digital methods will re-configure the way organizations, social scientists, and
citizens ‘see’ the world in which they live.

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This article investigates a segmentation model used by the Danish Tax and Customs
Administration to classify businesses’ motivational postures. The article uses two different
conceptualizations of performativity to analyze what the model’s segmentations do; Hacking’s
idea of making up people and MacKenzie’s idea of performativity. Based on these two approaches
I demonstrate that the segmentation model represents and performs the businesses as it ‘makes up’
certain new ways to be a business and as the businesses can be seen as ‘moving targets’. With
inspiration from MacKenzie my following argument is that the segmentation model posits a
remarkable cleverness in that it simultaneously alters what it represents and represents this
altered reality to confirm the accuracy of its own model of the businesses’ postures. However,
despite this cleverness the model bears a blind spot as it assumes a world wherein everything
around the model is in motion and can be shaped, whereas it believes itself to be stable. As
indicated in the article, this assumption turns out problematic as the tax administration questions
the model’s ability to produce valid comparisons. All in all, the article provides a detailed
description and analysis of the model’s performativity and provides an example of a
performativity study which in its methodology differs from the methodological criteria set up by
MacKenzie.

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Leadership, change management, mentoring, coaching, thinking in holistic terms, leadership development, contract management, project management, balanced score card, and benchmarking are terms that flourish in the newspapers, on leadership and management courses and programmes. The memoirs of great leaders and fix it by reading five minutes a day are sold in bundles at the airports around the world. The academic literature on the subjects is increasing rapidly, and within the last ten to fifteen years the public sector has come and more into focus, following the New Public Management wave. Many of concepts seem to become buzzwords, but the facts remain that the world is changing and so are/must the organizations. My focus is primarily on the public sector, but this sector can nowadays not be treated without looking at the private and the not for profit sector as well. Therefore – and because of my experience in trade unions and other voluntary organizations these organizations are incorporated in the paper

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End user participation between processes of organizational and architectural design

Våland, Marianne Stang(Frederiksberg, 2010)

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Abstract:

In the thesis, I explore the construction of mutual links between two design
processes that have traditionally been considered separated and sequentially
organized: the organizational and the architectural design processes. The general
background for the study is the increasing interest in space and architecture as a
potential strategic vehicle that has established within contemporary management
during recent years. Scholars within organization studies seem to share this
interest. However, only few research contributions are based on empirical studies.
My aspiration with the thesis is to contribute to fill this gap.

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In this article I contribute to descriptive green business research on how processes of eco-effective greening business unfold in the practical reality. I look into the case of the increasing interaction between the multinational oil company Shell and the world’s largest wind turbine company Vestas. I draw on descriptive organisational sense-making theory and analyse to this end Shell and Vestas’ shared green sense-making on off-shore wind energy business. The article concludes that greening companies such as Shell – that are not born green – might be considerably advanced, if these companies strengthen their relationships with companies such as Vestas – that are born green. This is so, since companies that are born green have strong green ecocentric business beliefs that can function as important engines in shared green sense-making with companies that are not born green and have more hesitant green beliefs.
KEY WORDS: Sustainable business, sense-making, climate change, oil and wind turbine companies